Control of a Uniformly Magnetized Plasma with External Electric Fields
This addresses plasma control for fusion or astrophysical applications, but appears incremental as it builds on linear analysis and existing instability models.
The paper tackled the problem of stabilizing plasma dynamics under a uniform external magnetic field by controlling the roots of the dispersion relation, resulting in suppression of unstable modes and stabilization as confirmed by numerical experiments on Gaussian equilibria and the Dory-Guest-Harris instability.
Stabilizing plasma dynamics through externally applied electric and magnetic fields is a fundamental control problem. We study this question for a plasma evolving under a uniform external magnetic field. Although the governing dynamics are nonlinear, a linear analysis based on the Laplace-Fourier transform yields actionable insight. In particular, by controlling the location of the roots of the dispersion relation, we propose a general control strategy that restores stability, with the free-streaming solution recovered as a special case. Numerical experiments for Gaussian equilibria and for the Dory-Guest-Harris instability show that the proposed control suppresses the unstable modes and stabilizes the dynamics, in agreement with our theoretical predictions.